Vladimir Gurman, Renat Perelet and Paul Safonov
(Russian Academy of Sciences)
ISEE Newsletter (January, 1994)
The ISEE Russian Chapter, Institute of Control Sciences (ICS) and Program Systems Institute (PSI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), and the Russian Ministry for Environment and Natural Resources organized an International Interdisciplinary Meeting on «The Role of Information Sciences in Regional Development » that was held in Moscow and Pereslavl-Zalessky (near Moscow) on July 20-24, 1993.
The Meeting was attended by more than 40 scientists and ministerial experts mostly from Russia as well as from USA, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands, and focused mainly on the following topics:
In his greeting to the Meeting participants Russian Minister of Environment and Natural Resources preofessor Victor Danilov-Danilian stressed the necessity of systems approach to economic, population, natural resources and ecosystems issues in order to get effective results at the regional level. Information science was viewed as an effective tool for such integration. In its turn, informatics should itself become less « technocratic » and more « humanitarian », move its orientation from technosphere to biosphere. The establishment of science/technoparks and "ecopolices" in different regions of Russia was encouraged by the minister who considered them as important growth points of new, environmentally sound and sustainable socio-economic systems based on ecological economics principles, monitoring of the natural environment and socio-economic processes.
Ann-Mari Jansson (Stockholm University)
discussed the emergence of the ecological economics paradigm in her plenary
talk and also informed the Russian participants about ISEE activities.
The final round table discussion was devoted to elaborating specific principles and practical recommendations on the basis of suggestions made during the Meeting. A Concluding Document «Trend-Setting in Systems Approach to Information Technologies for Regional Management» was adopted. In particular, it emphasized the role of the Pereslavl-Zalessky Science Park as a promising example in this field.
A separate session was also held to discuss the development of the ISEE
Russian Chapter activities, including organizing different scientific events
in future, broadening the ISEE/RC membership, initiating projects that
would deal with the translation of foreign books in ecological economics
into Russian, and other questions.
Among activities planned by ISEE/RC is also a series of expeditions to Lake Baikal and its basin aimed at attracting attention of the international community to the urgency of solving ecological and economic problems of this region which is a unique natural system of world significance. Lake Baikal is the largest fresh water reservoir on our planet. It is a gigantic natural source of highest quality fresh water, which is expected to become the most important strategic water resource in the near future. However, because of some historical, political, and cultural circumstances, the current way of life and activity of people in the Baikal area (the lake basin measures about 500.000 square kilometers and directly influences the life of the lake) exacerbate environmental problems. Two large pulp and paper mills on the Baikal shore and on the bank of its main in-flowing the Selenga river have polluted the atmosphere and water for many years despite any attempts to introduce reliable and effective environmental controls. A Government decree of 1987 urging the speediest of Baikal environmental problems has not yet been implemented. The Baikal pulp-and-paper mill continues to operate. No real measures have been taken to convert the mill into a furniture and wooden house construction factory, and to implement ecologically expedient strategy for the adjoining regional development. The administrative control-and-command system, which created the problem, has collapsed, but the mills, which pollute Baikal, remain and continue to exist as a symbol of the backwardness of this society, and of the victory of criminal technocratic mentality. However, it is clear that the shortage of economic resources for radical changes in the Baikal region (which is connected with present social- economic crisis in Russia) makes it necessary to appeal to the world community to take joint actions for the sake of saving and preserving Baikal.
In the period of July 27 - August 10, 1993 the first expedition from the series planned was held with about 20 participants from Russia, USA, Germany and Austria.
The goal of the expedition was to help speed up the solution to the Baikal problem. The concrete tasks of the expedition were:
To ISEE/RC site